Theology at Resurgence

Five Reasons You Need to Study Theology and
‘Another’ Five Reasons You Need to Study Theology at Cal.vini.st

No Christian can avoid theology at Castle of Nutshells

In reading some other blog posts related to worship it brought up some thoughts of my own. It’s a little late for me to be writing so please take this as more of a stream of consciousness type thing and as always I’d love to read your thoughts.

Some say that they don’t need to be a serious Bible studier (because they aren’t, or they wouldn’t say it) to be spiritual in a Christian sense, they can do that mainly by enjoying His creation and serving people. Others can only practice their spirituality through reading the Bible or going to church.

I’ve never understood why people see a dichotomy. Psalm 19 gives us both the glory of creation and God’s revelation of Himself through what He has spoken.

I worship God through studying the Bible but also by things like drinking coffee. I roast my own and only buy the finest beans available which still comes out to only about $5 a pound. I’m amazed at the flavor a good cup of coffee has. There are many more flavor components in coffee (which Starbucks burns out) than in wine and at only a fraction of the cost. I marvel at God’s creation nearly every time I drink it. My afternoon cup (ironically, I can’t handle much caffeine) goes along with reviewing memorized Scripture and many times it’s the highlight of my day.

I also worship God through music, but maybe not in the way most others do. Unfortunately for many, singing is synonymous with worship. Singing is only one way to worship. I don’t like the act of singing and it gets in the way for me. Listening to a Mahler symphony is a more worshipful experience than singing praise choruses. It boggles mind to think about how much talent God gave composers to write these pieces of music for a full orchestra. Many parts of Mahler’s symphonies literally put the fear of God in me. They are a glimpse into heaven.

And of course I worship God through studying the Bible. Sometimes it’s from learning something new and sometimes it’s just marveling at who He is.

Last night in reading the letters of John, I saw the whole thing as an overture to an opera. The motifs are interrelated and if they are taken in isolation, the meaning may be lost. Each motif is dependent on others. These short encouraging letters give us a taste of part of the New Testament as a whole.

Though difficulties with mental health have lessened my enjoyment of earthly things and many things have been taken away, God’s character and His Word are the same forever and can always be counted on and and gazed at with wonder.

How do you worship God?

Psalm 27:4
The one thing I ask of the LORD– the thing I seek most– is to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, delighting in the LORD’s perfections and meditating in his Temple.

Isaiah 40:8
The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

Photo © Jeff, Scripture Zealot

Since the intention of some of my posts isn’t always clear, I will preface this by saying that I’m agreeing with my blogging friends TC and Stan. I’m providing short quotes from each blog post in case you don’t want to read all of them but I’ve provided links to each one if you are interested.

First came this:
Barack Obama and the TNIV by John Piper

The larger issue here is: Are the “programmatic changes” of the TNIV (and some other recent versions) worth the difficulties that the translators find themselves in when trying to bring singular Greek or Hebrew words over into English as plurals, or masculine words over into English without masculine connotations? The price is high and linguistically unnecessary.

Then TC at New Leaven mentioned it:
Barack Obama and the TNIV by John Piper…

To be honest, when I first saw the title, I thought Piper was going to use President Obama to bash the TNIV on gender-issues. Well, I was right, but not what I expected.

Soon after, Stan came up with some insight:
John Piper, the ESV, and hypocrisy

Aside from sounding extraordinarily petty and lame, perhaps John Piper should read some of the writings on his own blog before he starts drawing conclusions about current English usage.

…

It seems to me there are enough examples above [see his post] to show that John Piper is somewhat confused regarding the use of pronouns in modern English.

And the reason I thought I would do a little roundup of these posts is because I came across this today and it made me think of it:
National Grammar Day 2009: Ten Common Grammar Myths, Debunked
HT: Challies.com

They can be singular in certain situations. To quote an idol of mine, Geoff Pullum: ‘Avoid singular they if you want to; nobody is making you use it. But don’t ever think that it is new (it goes back to early English centuries ago), or that it is illogical (there is no logical conflict between being syntactically singular and semantically plural), or that it is ungrammatical (it is used by the finest writers who ever used English, writers who uncontroversially knew what they were doing).’

So there you have it.

Update – here is a new post by Stan:
“Singular” they, the ESV, and lost credibility

Reformation Trust is offering John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, and Doxology free for pastors (with $5 shipping).

This book was reviewed on this blog earlier.

HT: Challies

A few months ago I decided to mainly write positive posts pertaining to translations. The Message isn’t one of my favorites but I’ve learned it has its bright spots thanks to other bloggers. If you don’t like it at all please don’t comment.

Mine is Psalm 119:92 “If your revelation hadn’t delighted me so, I would have given up when the hard times came.”

I wrote about this in a previous post.

If you have a favorite verse or passage, or more than one, please post them here.